Gamer--freakz

gamespot score:n/a

my score:7.0

(+)Pros:-Its more Djmax released in 2 different versions,-both versions are hybrids in a way that they include both portable 1 and portable 2 songs,-geared to be easier and more managable for beginners mission-wise

(-)cons:-these games were actually not needed as everything is recycled,-no new content.......,- Yes I mean it,eveything in the games are recycled from portable 1 and 2

gameplay time:10-20 hours(short)-for those who played portable 1 or 2,100 hours+( very long lasting)-for newcomers.

The gameplay in fever and hottunes is the same as always, with the fever system and all ported over from portable 2. They, strangely, also have ported over the "green note" feature from black square and trilogy. Basically, if you miss a green note that comes down during any song, the BGM will immediately stop playing, so players will do thier best not to miss it. Also a change made to both games, is the price tune down of gears, notes and characters. They figured that gold grinding in portable 2 was too much of a pain so they decided to make things cheaper, lucky them.

Nothing has really changed in the 2 games, presentation wise, graphics wise....they are all portable 2 standard. The songs too, they are different from portable 2.....but its all just a slight dellusion. The song selection in the 2 games are just weird, they took the portable 2 songs, threw some out, and threw in some portable 1 songs. The initial list of fever is different from hottunes, but all the songs found in fever and hottunes can be found in portable 1 and portable 2. Also, to make things even lazier, the portable 1 songs that were ported over retained thier insane note charts. This can obviously cause problems, but this is good for us vets, we get to experience those songs that used to crush us, with fever! So its actualy kind of a win situation, as when the newcomers get better they get to enjoy those crazy charts as well.

The cons in these games should be fairly simple......laziness. They just mashed in some songs from portable 1 along with 2 and they call them a new game....its kinda stupid. The only new song however is hip hop rescue, which is kinda weird, music wise. The MV of it was used from let go in trilogy, which is another proof of pentavision's laziness. Gears, notes and character wise too, they were all used from portable 2. Seriously, they should just call this game Djmax portable 2 PLUS or something.

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For vets like myself, I see little reason to get these games, they are seriously nothing we havent seen. If you ask me vets are better off buying portable 3 or trilogy and engulf themselves in new content, fever and hottunes are for newcomers. Anyway fever is a release meant for americans and hottunes is a release geared for the japanese , so we partially cant blame pentavision. Still, a little new content cant hurt.

Happy gaming.

Its been awhile hasnt it? I totally forgot about this( along with some of the other blog projects) due to me trying to catch up with reviews, no time for these side stuff. Blame school, I have been really busy lately. As usual, spoilers ahoy, and here are today's top 5.






5.Hei
From: Darker than black: Ryuusei no gemini

1st up ranking 5th in the list today is Hei from the 2nd season of darker than black. Many will be confused, I'll explain.

"What the fark? Isn't hei the good guy in season 1 and a good guy in season 2 too?" Well thats mainly true, but the Hei I want to focus on here is the 2nd season's Hei, more particularly episode 1 and 2's Hei, before he started to travel with suou.

Whats so memoriable is, the "good" Hei we have been seeing for the entire season 1 is doing bad stuff here. In episode 1(or 2), Hei is seen killing the father of our heroine, suou. Also, later he kills april, who is doing nothing but just acting as suou's gurdian. Right off the bat Hei kills off 2 of the main character's most treasured family members, right on! He deserves to be here just for that few moments.

4."God"

gamespot score:7.5(good)

my score:7.5

(+)pros:-Improved presentation,- same addictive dugeon crawling system,-boss fights are still fun and challenging,-lagaard has more personality etria in terms of characters,-plenty of jobs to choose from adds variety

(-)cons:-abnormal difficulty may not be suited for majority of players,-job nerfs provide much discomfort for series veterans,-like with ronins and hexers from EO 1, beasts provide retraining annoyances for EO 2

gameplay time:50 hours+(long)






Etrain odyssey 2, 2nd game in the 3 game franchise as of today. The series should be no stranger to dungeon crawling lovers with a DS. Etrain odyssey is a game oftenly avoided because of the punshing difficulty. But I say to suck it up, cause if players manage to plow through the difficulty, they are in for a hell of a satisfying experience, that is the case for all etrian odysseies, including this one, etrian odyssey 2.




Just like etrian odyssey 1, the 2nd game doenst provide much for excessive story, but has same background refrences. Instead of etria, this time the game features lagaard, a bustling city with once again, the yggdrasil labrinth towering above. Adventurers all around come to explore it for fame and fortune, and ocne again, you are one of the hopeful adventurers. You head into lagaard, make a guild, and hire adventuers to make an attempt to smoke out the labrinth. Fam and fortune awaits!( As well as a fairly deep story as you go deeper into the accursed dungeon that has taken tons of lives)




Being one of those really hardcore dungeon crawler games, etrian odyssey features a character creation system with a ton of customization. 1st off you pick a class( with a new few ones introduced in this game), choose a character portrait, and you are ready to go after you name it. Then, you are given 3 skill points to put into a babylon of skills available for each class. There are too many skills to max with just 1 playthrough with the character, so you can only add what you need. Thats alot of possibilities to go. You can bring up to 5 characters in 1 team of explorers, so think carefully what to bring along.


In the dungeon, this is where shit gets real. The game's difficulty comes in here. Monsters kill you in a matter of hits, and almost everything later on inflicts diffirent kinds of status effects. You can find yourself in a difficult situation by just examining a tree, and getting ambushed by a bunch of worms that one shot you. Also, with the high random encounter rate, you will find even wandering around dangerous. There are also FOEs, which are big red orbs that are seenable on the actual screen. They are "mini bosses" that wander around as you do, and if you run into one, you will by no means get slaughtered terribly. As you take a step, they do too. While some FOEs move around in a set pattern, allowing you to bypass them, some FOEs chase you down mercilessly until they lose interest. Yeap, its that terrifying. Bosses are even worse, while the very 1st boss has FOEs backing him up( sounds unfair but its not that bad), the rest come alone and they sure pack a huge punch. But then again, strategizing to beat them is really consturctive and when you finally beat them after dieing who-knows-how-many times, you get a huge feeling of satisfaction.

Now EO2 is just as hard as its preduseccor, I might even go as far as to say its harder. Now this might eventually turn many players off, and they will leave this to rot away at a shelf and let it collect dust. Thats not good. Also, like the previous game's ronin and hexer(which are now available from the start), the beast job requires unlocking and thus, needs to be trained from scratch, where your team is already at a much higher level. Finally, the most annoying factor for me, is the nerf of certain classes. My favourite class in EO1, the alchemist has been terribly nerfed damage wise. Even with megido, they are still lacking. Also, protectors and medics got nerfed, in a bad way. Some of thier skills went to the gunner and the war magus, new jobs. This will cause discomfort, for the veterans mostly.

Happy gaming.

gamespot score:7.0(good)

my score:7.5

(+)Pros:- fun trip filled with tons of humour and personality,- most banchos have funny behaviour and will crack you up,- lots of debatable options and choice making throughout the game,- high replayability,-menji glares are hilarious and fun as heck

(-)Cons:-boring brawling,- clunky graphics,-grinding for better stats is quite a pain

gameplay time:20-30 hours(average)





Sorry for long delays within each post, I have been extremely busy as fk these few days with loads and loads of assignments and shit. Anyway, kenka bancho: badass rumble is a brawler game for the PSP. In japan however this is the 3rd kenka bancho game to be released, out of the total 4 released so far, with a 5th one in developement. Noone expected this to come to be translated, until good ol' atlus picked it up, now we get the liberation to experience this fun yet humourous game. Prepare for an extremely funny and enjoyable kyoto trip.






The story of the game is pretty simple and typical but is humourous to the max. You play as a character which you name urself, and arre basically a badass bancho known in your school for violence and fighting. Back in your hometown, you are the best there is, so like every other bancho, going to kyoto means business. Why? Because all schools around japan from all the major towns and cities are coming for this trip as well. This means banchos from every are coming to kyoto. As a bancho, you obviously want to beat them all up to claim the title as strongest fighter in japan. Bearing your fists of fury, your trip to kyoto will be a memoriable one, where you emerge as strongest fighter japan.




Kyoto is a big big place, it has many towns and sections to walk and roam around....to pick fights with those punks who tink they are so damn badass. Time to put them down! In the streets of kyoto, you are given 7 days in your trip to roam around looking for banchos, your main objective being to find and beat as many banchos as you can in this span of 7 days. Since it is a school trip, many of the 7 days have time set aside for school activities. But, being the badass bancho you are, you can choose to ditch the activities. Cool huh? But going for these activites boost your relationship with your classmates, so choose your posion.



Combat plays a bug part in kenka bancho, though sadly its one of the game's less appealing feats. Anyway, the fights start off great. You cant go around beating everyone you see on the streets, most of them are normal people who are terrified of you and will run at the slightest stare. Any one who can stand up to your almighty menji glare however, will rise up to you and challenge you. After both you and your victim have locked eyes, you will each trash talk each other down. You are given short words and phrases to contruct a badass sentence, such as "I'll break your face" or "Prepare to meet my fists". If you successfully construct a badass sentence, you get to land a good clean and free hit on the enemy, giving you an advantage in battle. If you construct wrongly, you will get something like "I eat swiss chicken, or "Time for kaboom", lame sentences, and the opposite happens, you get hit by the enemy once. After the trash talk and glare, you finally fight, which consists of slow punching,kicking and special abilities. If you win a fight against a bancho( which mostly are scripted), you will gain thier hometown specialty skill, and some others, which you can add to your arsenal.

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The game fails in certain ways. Being a brawler, it has disappointing brawling features. The combat is slow, and even the new moves dont do much to spice up the battles. Luckily the menji glare and trash talking make battles have some looking foward to. Also, even though battles are somewhat boring, you will have to do it alot, since day after day, the roaming gangsters grow stronger and stronger. Fighting to level up later on is a pain, though earlier levels its still quite tolerable. Finally, the graphics are below average, it really should have been better though I dont expect something dissidia standard.
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Overall kenka bancho is a fun and humourous experience that can be enjoyed by a huge majority of players, but the fighting may not appeal to all, it might even go as far as to annoy many others. Still, if you can past the slow and un interesting combat, you've got a game full of personality ahead of you.






Happy gaming.

Moar marvel vs capcom 3 news yesterday! The reveals were hype and eveyone went absolutely nuts! There were about 4 reveals, Im gonna skim through them real quick.




For the marvel side's number one, we have she-hulk. She looks hot in her character artwork, but other than that, shes really a stupid choice, just like X-23. Nothing more than a hulk clone, though her gameplay roughly differs from hulk, she is more of a beatdown character. She has pretty good damage, a pretty stupid running animation, 1 retarded super and a stupid level 3 hyper. I really dont see the point of adding her in. I would prefer me some miss marvel.

Zero looks like a really good choice. Then again, Im a huge MMX fan and am a bigger zero fan, of all versions( MMX,MMZ,MMZX). I really hoped for aile from ZX, but the MMX zero is fine to me. He looks really powerful ( in fact, too powerful, somewhat dante tier), with combos that look unbreakable, and some insane teleporting prowess. Also so far he does have a butt load of special moves from the gameplay videos. Though I must say his level 3 hyper looks plain, hes an overall solid looking character.

Up for DLC here is shuma gorath. Shuma was fun in MVC 2, I dont understand all the shuma hate around the web, I think hes a solid choice. But since hes for DLC I dont suppose he will be ready to play right off the get-go. Will look foward to using him.

Also up for DLC is jill from RE. Many dont like her new look, same here, the old ones were better. But still, liking the nina williams look, and with that red thing in her chest, I suppose thes a villian in the game.

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Thats it for now, hoping for more to be revealed.

gamespot score:7.5 (good)

my score:8.0

(+)Pros:- same old addicting pokemon "capturing" system,- difficulty balances things out and makes the game feel right,- plenty more pokemon to capture than the previous game,- has a lenghty story to keep you occupied for a long time

(-)cons:- side quests distract from the fun,- not much major gameplay improvements



gameplay time:20-30 hours(average)



Now that the AFA madness has subsided, its time to get back to business. Since I have been mass playing pokemon soul silver these days, Im gonna do a pokemon game review today to keep me on my pokemon fever. Shadows of almia is the sequel to the 1st pokemon ranger game, and it features the same stylus system as before, with a brand new adventure and a brand new continent. Shadows of almia in my opinion is more fun than the 1st pokemon ranger, with its new lenghty story and more variety of pokemon, you are in for a good ride.





The story pretty much starts out pretty good. You are a highly sopisticated kid who wants to become a pokemon ranger, thus you enter ranger school. There you meet a couple of "best" friends, one whom wants to be a ranger base operator, the other wants to be a pokemon ranger like you. After graudating with a happy ending you all get to be what you want, and you are transfered to a ranger base. There you accpet missiions from townsfolk and your superiors to capture pokemon, solve problems, blah blah blah. And as usual there is always bad brewing beding the works, this time its not the geo rock squad, its something much much more sinister featuring a more "classic" bad guy team set.







Shadows of almia provides the same old addictive gameplay featured back in the 1st game. As you do missions you go around fields or caves and many other different areas. In these areas all you need to do is reach the end which you will most of them time potentially find the source of the problem. Of course to get to the end you are hindered by mere obstacles such boulders, wooden fences, or bushes on fire. Your character doenst even know how to swim across mere lakes or rivers!~ So what do you do? This game fortunately puts ur brain to work and gets you on some backtracking. To counter these obstacles you catch pokemon corresponding to the obstacle. If its a bush on fire, catch a water pokemon to douse it out. If its a boulder, get a fighting pokemon to smash it. If its a river, ctach some pokemon who can swim and get it to bring u across. This system of catching what you need is really cool, since it always reminds you to catch what is needed and bring more pokemon than you should during your treks.


Of course, the game's more addictive aspect is here, the moment of pokemon circling. To catch the pokemon, you walk to them on the map to engage in a "battle". Though many a time there are aggresive pokemon that will come to you without need to approach it. During capturing, you draw loops around the pokemon in the touch screen with your stylus. Be careful cause when drawing the loop you cannot touch the pokemon or its attacks or the loop will break. Each successful loop will do 1 damage to the pokemon. After u successfully reduce its "HP" to 0, you will add it to your party. Of course if your loop drawing is interupted halfway the pokemon will have it hp reverted to the max. Also if the pokemon attaacks your circle while you are looping around it, you will suffer damage. And if your hp drops to 0, game over. If you find things hard, you can always use the pokemon that you already have and use thier assists. Examples are such, fighting poke assists make your loops do 2x damage. Grass assists make grass appear around the loops, making the enemy stuck. There are tons of assists out there, making the game sprout with a variety of options available during a battle.

Altough pokemon ranger is a great experience that can compare to its original counterpart. It is plagued with some extremely boring side quests. Besides the end game few side quests, the regular listening to rantings of townspeople is really annoying. The requests are repititive that it gets so old. The rewards arent very rewarding anyway, so its best to ignore most of them. Also, besides making the game look more "stylish" by adding new frames and throwing in a couple more attribute types, the game doenst have any new improvements. New pokemon aside, the rest of the game feels some sort recycled.

Happy gaming.

Alright grab a chair cause this is gonna be a long post. I just came back from anime festival asia today and am as tired as fuck, so im gonna mosey on and do something lazy.

This is my 1st year at the AFA, and boy, it is amazing. Didnt noe that singapore would have soooooooo many anime fans! The place was like, mother farking packed!!! We were pratcially like canned sardines. Without further ado, here it is, my day at the AFA 2010. ( All pictures were shot on scene in real life, though my camera skills may not be too good so bear with the pictures).






Okay so I promised to meet my friend at the convention center, where this was supposed to be held. The thing was at 10am, yet my friend told me to meet him at 8am. I thought he was retarded, to go there 2 hours earlier. Anyway I woke up late and took a cab there as I didnt want to keep him waiting, when i reached the place and looked around for my friend, I saw tons of people cosplaying as hatsune miku and some other vocaloids. Only 1 word, awesome.

Anyway I saw my friend and we went to buy some tickets, but, to my dismay.....the place was packed. The queue was tremendous! Due to some blogger issues I couldnt upload a vidoe I took featuring me walking from the beggining of the queue to the end, its frigging amazing! Added all together and when placed in a straight line, its easily longer than a chinese mystical dragon. And the stupid thing is, we were 2 hours early! These guys must have came here at like 6am or something.

So we queued and we queued while I played my PSP to pass time. Unfortunately I 4get to charge the damn thing before leaving and it flattened out after 10 minutes or so. Bummer. So at 9.30 am( thats 1 and a half hours of queueing), we were at the ticket counter. WOOOO. I bought some tickets for myself and for some of my other friends and brother, which were supposed to meet me later. While queuing we saw plenty of cosplayers! Some were awesome some were not, anyway that got me pumped! Without further ado we went inside.




So here we are! Straight up in the convention centre, at 9.40 am( I think they opened like 30 minutes earlier). The placed was fking crowded I could hardly move. When inside, i turned my head right, and there it was, the 1st thing I saw. The hatsune miku project diva arcade machine!!
OMG. I immediately snapped a pic, there it is, right in action. The graphics were awesome, but too bad, the queue for the game was equally horrendous to the queue outside, so I had to pass. Some other time maybe.

Cosplayers and otakus ahoy! The placed was filled with anime goodness, ranging from horny pillow casings to figurines. Some of the figurines are amazing, they are pretty damn tempting, its too bad majority of them cost over 50 bucks. I was stupid enough to bring only 50 bucks and I had no choice but to pass. I will bring more money next year for sure! Those black rock shooter figurines will be mine.

On a side note it seems the 2 most popular anime in singapore currently are black rock shooter and angel beats, and maybe some of K-on. Black rock shooter is EVERYWHERE. They have figurines displayed around like jewelry, they have posters, files, EVERYTHING. Angel beats was also pretty much in demand, with posters and posters and more posters. Same with K-on, but it seems to be slightly losing out to be angel beats. Them otakus are CRAZY, I think they spent over hundreds at the AFA today, carrying tons of bags with tons of goodies....damn I was pretty jealous.

AFA also had a column for artwork to be displayed. Some of these were amazing, I snapped a few quick shots of the best 2.

This is kinda blur, but well its was crowded and I coudlnt stay in 1 place for too long.

Next up me and my friend went to the stage area for some event. There we met danny choo, the director and producer for AFA 2010. He was a cool ass guy, hes a major otaku, and hes married!!! WTF!! Anyway he showed the crowd at the stage area a programme called japan pop culture, which is gonna be showed on animax soon. It was mostly a show about most things anime related, and also showing off some of japan's coolest technology and shit. Pretty cool show, too bad it didnt last that long.

After we were out of the stage area we went back to the main attractions. There was a karaoke area where poeple would siing their favourite japanese songs, but it was too fking crowded to even snap a picture of anything. Then there was this. It was a car with a gundam do-over job. It was cool, but there was one with anime babes on it. That one I coudlnt get a shot of unfortunately, due to space constraint issues.

There was also a MAID CAFE OMG. But it was PACKED AS FUCK. That was my only regret for this year's AFA, I coudlnt go to the maid cafe.... I swear me and my friend tried to go in, but it was so crowded in the morning that we decided to try again in the afternoon. But when we looked in the brochure, there was a special K-on girls appearance in the cafe. So guess what, the queue only got longer, HAHAHAHA. I guess I'll try again next year.

So i went around snipping cosplay pictures. Coudlnt get that many due to as usual, space constraints. Around noon, like 1-2pm-ish. There was a super street fighter 4 fight club being established. The people there were mostly crazy SSF4 gamers. I managed to snap a pic, though it was rather low quality, I think someone bumped into me. Anyway hours of cosplay hunting later, when we came back here there was a blazblue fight club established! But the crowd was estathic, I couldnt get a picutre. There was also this rachel alucard cosplayer, she was hot, hot as heels. I wanted to take a picure but snapping a pic of her back seemed pointless. I coudlnt get her attention as she was busy looking at the game -.-.

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After MORE looking around ( this time at swords and hollow masks and guns and counter strike and call of duty cosplayers), we decided that we have seen pretty much everything, and decided to head into the stage area for some slack time. It was around 3.50-4pm, the gundam 00 movie jus screened finished and it was mostly a full house. We somehow managed to sneak a few seats and slack. Since the placed was bloody full, we suspected something big was coming and decided to stay in our seats. I sneaked a pic of the stage area.

See how outragously packed it is???!?!! Otakus from all around, both male and female, were spread across the hundreds ( maybe close to a thousand) of seats. There even people standing and sitting on the floors due to the lack of seats. My god I have never seen so many people for an anime event. After some wait we got to see Jam project and ichirou mizuki on stage. The crowd went wild for jam project, people were shouting, screaming and raising thier hands like a bunch of rebels. And though ichirou mizuki was an old 50+ year old fella whom I tot wud have sucked, when he went on stage the crowd simply exploded. Altough he was 50, on stage he seemed like 20! He was bursting with energy, his voice simply echoed through the whole stage area! That was simply terrific, though they didnt sing any songs, since the anisong concert is on later in the day. * Quietly runs off to get some jam project and ichirou mizuki songs*

2 princesscy looking ladies from and unknown anime/game.

The varia in action!

Possibly one of the best fellas in the area. Sepiroth is the shit, that wing looks pretty damn real up close.

Probably 2 of the hottest cosplayers. They were followed EVERYWHERE, throughout the WHOLE DAY. Seriously they are pretty damn hot up close.



Taokaka! Kinda blur since I was kinda rushing against the crowd.

Kamen rider! They are pretty rare in the field this was the only pair around. And if you ask me they arent half bad.

Storm trooper from star wars and yumi from black rock shooter. This is mostly for yumi, shes a pretty good cosplayer, loving that scythe.

Lelouch and some random.......person. Mostly for lelouch.

5 girls prancing around, 4 of them surrounding one squatting on the floor looking cute. Not a bad group, they were like doing a mini skit lol.

Persona 4!!!! Nothing much to say here exepct greatness. Yosuke in my opinion is better than the MC cosplayer.



Kinda blur but the girl in the blue kimono is pretty hot. The other one isnt half bad too.

Oh fck yeah the bleach team. Looking pretty awesome. I would say halibel is the best looking among the bunch but shes currently being blocked by gin.

I have some more but these were the best ones among the few. I missed quite a lot of good ones though, like ichigo, naruto, some good hatsune mikus, the call of duty and counter strike people, hazama...and many more. Kinda regretted, but be sure next year I will bring a proper camera. Oh yeah and I didnt want to leave empty handed, so at the last minute I went to buy a poster.

Heres a picture of it, kinda blur but it should be easy to see that its just a crazy girl trying to rip something up. Its really a work of art, its hanging up in my room now. Unfortunely I wont be going for the AFA's 2nd day due to homework -.-. So this is goodbye for now. I WILL BE BACK NEXT YEAR, WITH A CAMERA AND MORE MONEY.

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AFA FTW.

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Keep rocking on. Peace.